


Damages

by RurouniHime



Series: Day series [5]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Anniversary, Arguing, Assassins & Hitmen, Established Relationship, Fights, Guns, M/M, Makeup Sex, On the Run, Protectiveness, Reconciliation Sex, Threats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 01:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Just what is it you’re saying, darling?” Eames feels loose and razor-edged at the same time. He both loves and despises the twist of the smile on his face. “Ready to go your own way?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damages

**Author's Note:**

> The Inception universe does not belong to me, nor does it make me any money. Yes, that’s the idea I implanted into your head. Just go with it.
> 
> A little bit of a different mood for them. Sorry, boys.

_It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. ~Rita Rudner_

 

His mobile rings. Eames thinks about it for two nanoseconds before he jabs the button and puts it to his ear.

“Arthur.” It’s a trial even to say Arthur’s name, the rest is so badly bottled. “What part of ‘do not attempt to talk to me right now’ was unclear?”

“What part of ‘do not walk out that door’ was unclear to you?” Arthur fires back, no pause at all. Eames feels his shoulders stiffen of their own accord, battening down hatches, throwing up plating, steady and inexorable as the storm building in the sky overhead.

“Unless you’ve decided you do indeed own the rights to my life now,” he returns, pointedly blithe, weaving around an older couple on the sidewalk, “I can go anywhere I damn well choose.”

“You can be such a fucking _asshole_ , Eames!”

He’s never been so frustrated with Arthur. But that’s nothing compared to how _angry_ Arthur is at him: he has also never heard Arthur’s voice twist in quite this way before, and he’s glad he can’t see his face, because it’s likely there’d be no coming back from that.

“That the best you’ve got?”

And he really should not have said that, he knows it, because Arthur has shown time and time again that he can insult circles around such a mundane little gaffe, in ways that make a person wish he’d never developed the capacity for feelings.

“Do you know what your problem is, Mr. Eames?” Arthur says, low, a lover’s voice. That alone digs in and gouges, hard. “You can’t stomach real accountability. On a job, fine. In a dream. But actual reality? You’d rather wash your hands of anyone you have to answer to.”

Eames takes a second, disguised as a breath, to unclench his fingers from around the plastic bag of… well, what the fuck is it anyway? Toiletries. Shaving cream and toothpaste and a bloody foldable toothbrush, the last things he had to pick up. He knows now he should never have bothered with the little details. He takes that same second to unlock his jaw, to slow his step, to throw down the last of the shutters over the various windows of his frame. “Well, I am so sorry you feel that way, Arthur. Next time I have disgruntled hit men on my arse, I’ll let myself be _held accountable_. I’ll just sit tight and let them detach all the body parts they want from me. Oh, and incidentally, anyone who happens to be with—”

“No,” Arthur cuts him off. “No, this isn’t about your damn altruism or your self-sacrificing nature, or even your stupid debts. It’s about you doing whatever you like. And once you’re on your way, you don’t give any thought to _me_ , you don’t think about _us_. You just go, no matter what I say about it! And then you come back and sweep up the pieces afterward, and figure they’ll all still be there waiting where you tossed them!”

Eames very nearly puts his fist through the car window he’s passing, a nice Mustang convertible in deepest black. “How dare you? You are the last person who has a right to accuse me of _not thinking of you!_ ”

“Well, sue me,” Arthur snaps. “Because now I’m thinking of me, and let me tell you, it’s a long time coming.”

“Just what is it you’re saying, darling?” Eames feels loose and razor-edged at the same time. He both loves and despises the twist of the smile on his face. “Ready to go your own way?”

“Don’t you turn this around,” Arthur seethes, not rising to it, refusing to rise to it, it’s maddening. “You know what day it is? Do you even fucking _think_ I’d— No, you know what? I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction. What the hell does all this even mean to you? That you’re still all alone, that you don’t have any responsibility to anyone else?”

“ _No_ , it means I do not _stick around_ and put my _husband_ in danger for something that isn’t his responsibility!” 

“You can shove your ‘responsibility’ right up your ass, Eames!” Arthur shouts. “You have a responsibility to me. Me! You are not walking out of here, not for this. God, here I thought you— No, you never change, do you? You’d just drop it all in a single second!”

Eames feels his jaw click over. Hears everything encompassed silently in ‘it all’. The rain just beginning to spatter down is icy against his skin. “Say it again, Arthur.”

“I swear to god I will come after you and I’ll kill you myself if they haven’t done it fir—”

Arthur breaks off.

“Well?” Eames prods venomously.

“Shh!” quick and curt and irritated.

“Arthur.”

The connection is silent save for Arthur’s breathing. Then, a muddled thumping over the line. And a crash. 

Voices that aren’t Arthur’s.

“Get the _hell_ out of my house,” Arthur grates volubly, as cold and hard as frost. He sounds far away, as if the phone and he are no longer in the same space. 

But the ratcheting of Arthur’s SIG is very clear.

“Arthur!” Eames shouts, breaking into a run in the middle of a stride, slinging the bag of toiletries to the side, pressing the mobile flat to his ear. He dashes out into the street, flagging a taxi down almost by way of his body over the hood, jumps into the front seat and shouts the address at the driver, then pulls his gun and shoves it directly against the man’s temple. “Now!”

The taxi’s engine shrieks as the driver yanks it into motion again, setting off a cascade of blaring horns behind. The wheels slip for an interminable second on damp pavement. In his left ear, Eames can hear gunshots, things breaking. Shouting from voices he doesn’t know.

They’re early, they’re— fucking _early_ , he had at least a week and a half to clear off, get well away from his bastard of a husband, keep him out of the line of fire whether he likes it or not, lead them noisily away and remove the threat as efficiently as he can, until he can go back and _not_ put Arthur in danger, and fuck it if Arthur doesn’t agree with his methods. Half the time Eames doesn’t agree with Arthur’s methods, but this is the _only way that makes sense_ , and Arthur just will not leave it alone. Eames doesn’t want Arthur with him, doesn’t want to see him and be reminded of everything he has to let go of for a time, of everything he has to lose, of all the ways he’s on the verge of breaking, shattering into pieces no one will ever be able to reassemble if Arthur dies, because of him, because of something he did before they were even together, oh god, if they do _anything_ to Arthur—

“I said floor it!” he shouts in the cabbie’s face, but they’re already close, he never went that far away to begin with, just needed a few last minute things before his flight. He can see their apartment building, calm and pristine, and now full of murderers who are gunning for him. 

Who are now within striking distance of the love of his life.

He leaps out of the car and the cab peels off without even waiting for the door to shut. Eames slams through the building’s front door and runs up all three flights of stairs without feeling any of it, rain dripping from his hair into his eyes, takes the hallway at a sprint and comes up on the open door to their apartment just as someone is backing through it, a lean man in clichéd black on black, muttering into a Bluetooth. Eames smashes him neatly on the base of his skull with his gun, then aims at the second man, still in the front hallway, and shoots him through the throat. The visible proof that they are in his house fires fresh fury straight to the center of his chest: the hallway is trashed, the table overturned and half out of the kitchen, picture frames knocked off the walls and shattered on the floor. Bullet holes strafing a jagged line through plaster. 

Someone is still shooting from the sitting room, though, and Eames’ fear unzips, just a little.

“Arthur!” he calls to make his presence known. He yanks the Bluetooth off the unconscious man’s ear and crushes it underfoot, then skirts down the hallway at a crouch, right in time to drag the next in line around the corner. He uses the man’s momentum to hurl him face-first into the wall bordering the kitchen. It only stuns the guy, and Eames pushes him back in order to gain space, but the next thing he knows, a shot from the sitting room pummels through the man’s side, shredding black fabric and lodging in the far wall, zinging right across Eames’ sight. The man slumps. Another shot flies wide. Eames ducks. _“Arthur!”_

He hears banging, grunting. The crunch of something heavy and wooden breaking. And then choked, rasping sounds, and feet scrabbling at the carpet. Eames whips into the sitting room, low to the ground with his gun braced in both hands, but Arthur is at the far end, one arm locked tight around the last intruder’s neck in a chokehold, slowly and steadily snuffing the air out of him. The man kicks and flails, more and more desperate, until his motions grow feeble and finally cease, a physical sigh.

Arthur holds on for another five seconds, his lips forming the numbers silently, then lets him go.

There’s a fourth man, plainly dead in the center of the room. Eames has his weapon trained on the fifth, already downed by the window, but it’s obvious he’s not getting up any time soon: by the amount of blood on the carpet, he took more than one bullet. Eames picks his way through the debris, keeping a line of sight on the hallway, until he makes it to Arthur’s side.

The entire apartment is deathly silent save for their syncopated breathing.

It’s Arthur who drops first, a gradual slide to his knees and then to the floor with a heavy exhalation. Eames follows, slumping against the wall, trying to catch his breath. Arthur is rattled, mussed beyond belief in a rumpled t-shirt, bare toes sticking out from the legs of his jeans, but save for a worrying redness on one side of his jaw, not injured. He checks the SIG with automatic motions, fingers snapping the clip free then jamming it back in again, chambering a round.

“You’re alright.” Eames isn’t sure if it’s a statement or a question.

Arthur nods once. He has the inside of his lower lip clamped between his teeth, Eames can see it. “There were two more.”

“Unconscious and dead. In the hall.”

Arthur shuts his eyes, nodding again. And Eames takes stock of a sitting room he no longer recognizes: toppled easy chair, couch on its back where Arthur must have used it for cover, the entire mantel cleared of various breakables they’d placed there. The big picture window is shattered, likely a stray bullet or three, and rain lashes in, pouring down outside, saturating the carpet and the body lying there.

“So, we’re going to have to move,” Eames says, thinking of a taxi driver who now knows there are psychotic people at this address.

Arthur lets the gun drop to the floor between them. “You think?”

Eames wraps his hand around Arthur’s, and is surprised when Arthur turns the grip immediately, palm to palm. Threads their fingers together and squeezes. He’s shaking, and he’ll never admit it, but Eames… might be the one trembling, actually. He lifts their hands and kisses the back of Arthur’s, holds it to his mouth, and takes a proper minute.

In the distance, sirens wail.

Arthur gets to his feet with only the faintest of difficulties. “Gotta go,” he mutters. And pulls Eames up after him.

~

The motel room is a sham. The ceiling has water spots that look like they could be breeding the next plague and the floor sags under threadbare carpeting. The furniture consists of a bed that brushes three of the four walls, and is covered with a faded brown duvet. Eames has no idea what time it is anymore, only that it’s as black as used engine oil outside.

Arthur shuts up the place: locks the door, crawls across the mattress to check windows and draw shades that barely seem to be attached to the window frame at all. Eames finds a spot for their bags, tucked into the corner just behind the door. His whole body hurts. They’ve been awake for some god-awful stretch, and it’s visible in the lines marring the bridge of Arthur’s nose, the droop of his eyelids as well as the rigid effort of keeping them open. Arthur sits on the bed and finally puts his gun down. It’s a process, a re-sighting and maintenance check, a switched out clip and a resounding _chnk!_ as he sets the first round in place. He cranes back and shoves the weapon under one of the bed’s saggy pillows, then straightens.

Eames saw to his own gun on the way up in the lift, secure enough in Arthur’s reflexes and a hovel that would never dream of paying for CCTV. The grit of the place is going to saturate everything, including the suit pants and once-crisp shirt Arthur doesn’t seem to care all that much about anymore. If not for the engulfing exhaustion, Eames would be bothered by the feeling of the room settling on his skin. He leans over the bed and pillows his own weapon, then pushes back to his feet with a sigh.

They stare at each other for a long time, Arthur cross-legged on the bed, Eames listing gently at its foot. They haven’t spoken since El Paso when Eames rerouted their tickets north again instead of the predictable hop over the border. Then, Arthur touched his arm and passed him a dreary deli sandwich as they sat amongst respectable Texans waiting to board their flight. Murmured an admonishment to eat.

At that exact moment, it might have been the best sandwich he’d ever tasted.

Only one of the two bulbs overhead is working; Arthur’s face is half visible in the faulty glare, the rest plunged into sepia darkness. Eames reaches over slowly and flicks the switch, giving the room back its equilibrium. With the light goes a sense of sound he hadn’t rightly been aware of: buzzing. His eyes adjust to the orangey wash through the window shades.

Arthur’s hand touches his before he’s quite used to the darkness, fingers encircling his wrist in a smooth, focused glide. He pulls Eames forward until he has to knee his way onto the bed or be toppled. Arthur rises onto his own knees as Eames gets on the mattress, his movements loose and uncoordinated, but for all that, still _intent_ , and it isn’t until Arthur’s hand slides around his nape, isn’t until Arthur kisses him, mouth to open mouth and steady, unrelenting pressure— _motion_ — that Eames catches up to it all.

His own limbs are sluggish, like he’s forgotten how to make them work, but he gets his hands onto Arthur’s waist, not sure if he’s trying to hold him still or encourage his movement. It hardly matters: Arthur’s forward motion has taken on a strange vibration, irregular and turbulent. He takes the kiss from Eames without indication that he might ever have asked for it, huffing hard through his nose over Eames’ cheek. Worries Eames’ upper lip and then plunges deep and draws a sound out of him that Eames didn’t realize he could make.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur whispers to his tongue, “sorry—” Loses it in the kiss, the rucking of Eames’ shirt jerked fast from his waistline. Arthur’s hand clamps tight to Eames’ right side and squeezes. Releases, and squeezes again, thumb circling over skin that tingles with sudden gooseflesh.

“No,” is all Eames manages. He’s going heady with it, too tired and strung out to do anything else, just grateful to have Arthur in his arms, astonishingly broken over how much he’s missed it. This last week has been damaging in so many ways, and now he can’t stop Arthur’s momentum, can’t even think to waylay it, just takes it when Arthur pushes him back to a duvet neither of them would normally be caught dead on. Arthur’s rough around the edges, ungainly in his hands as he drops Eames down and crawls on top of him, working at buttons with one hand and yanking at clothing with the other. And Eames is so sorry about all of it, about being a fucking bastard, about systematically shunting Arthur out of his way, and yeah, it was for his own good, but how, how in fuck is being away from his husband for _anyone’s_ good?

He can’t— can’t do it. Can’t even imagine where he’d be right now if he’d had his way.

Arthur wrenches at his shirt, fingers trembling, and Eames knows he’s trying to keep it intact— they’re low on functional clothing at the moment— but the way Arthur is shaking shows how near a thing it is. He finally gets it open, shoves it off of Eames’ shoulders and abandons it there, moves to Eames’ trousers and has them open before Eames can draw his next breath. Eames manages Arthur’s buttons with a bit more finesse, probably because he feels half-drugged, physically incapable of the tumult threatening his inner walls. Arthur’s shirt hangs open, framing his chest with shadow; Arthur bends over him, kissing him potently again, hand in Eames’ pants already and _yes_ , it’s probably about release and nerves and still somehow being alive nearly a day later, but it’s also that he loves his husband so much he can barely breathe with it, he’s so raw over what he almost did, he needs Arthur’s weight bearing down on his hands and chest and hips just to know he’s still there.

The fact is, he’d much rather be with Arthur anywhere in the world than alone, knowing Arthur’s safe somewhere else.

It’s going to be fast. He feels fractured in some crucial way, and it’s not going to happen like it could because of that. Eames realizes he’s been desperate for hours, and not for sex. For the whole of Arthur. Ever since they grabbed what they could and went out through their busted apartment door, his body became a ticking clock, counting down to a moment when they could stop moving and he could just _look_ at Arthur. Know he had him.

Arthur drops down fully atop him, thighs to chest, whispers something against his mouth, and Eames silences it. He wants to say he’s sorry, that he misjudged terrifically on several levels. That it wasn’t his intention to hurt Arthur, especially not on that day, that leaving him was the worst idea he could have had and that he’ll follow Arthur anywhere and everywhere, fuck all the wet boys on his trail and all the debts he owes. But it’s too much for this moment, beyond too much. He hitches Arthur against him, brackets hips with his thighs, and Arthur takes the control right away again with a shift so smooth Eames can’t keep up, can only blink rapidly at the filthy ceiling and Arthur’s face, Arthur’s heavy, hooded gaze as he drags Eames’ legs higher around his waist, takes him apart with intent, canting his hips into Eames’ again and again in a fierce, devastating roll, until his exhalations are ragged, more sound than air. Eames clings to Arthur, knows somewhere that he’s squeezing too hard, but then it’s on him and Arthur finds his mouth _again_ , and he can’t do anything but flounder in it, wait for all this sensation to give his body back to him. 

When the firing of his nerves recedes, he’s still kissing Arthur, and it’s _so damn familiar_. Eames wraps his arms around his husband, tilts their heads gently to deepen it, and tastes the fragile sound Arthur makes low in his throat.

~~~

_A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~Paul Sweeney_

~fin~


End file.
